Dis/Embodying Fieldwork in Japan

ABSTRACT

When flights reopened in 2020 between Kazakhstan, where I was based, and Japan, where I do my research, my first thought was, ‘Can I still fit in some fieldwork this summer?’ Fieldwork relies on an epistemology of co-presence: the things one can only learn by occupying the same physical space with others, observing their everyday lives, and conversing in the local vernacular, in a century-old tradition going back to Malinowski. Consequently, restrictions on travel make research seem impossible, even though ethnographers have developed new techniques for virtual ethnography while grappling with globalization, migration, and social media development. At the same time, the pandemic reminds us that physical co-presence entails a certain level of vulnerability that can both engender intimacy and endanger fieldworkers. As documented by studies of fieldwork safety in STEM research, researchers are more vulnerable in the field because of the way that the usual rules of interaction are suspended or unknown. This article takes up these issues in a Japan-specific context by contrasting the author’s fieldwork experiences as a young(er) woman studying marriage, dating, and intimacy with the ‘lost’ 2020 field season. It concludes by discussing the possibility of merging digital and traditional methods to increase researcher safety.

Acknowledgments

My gratitude goes out to Sally McLaren and Jenny Hall for inviting me to this special issue and the suggestions of two very kind and positive anonymous reviewers. I also wish to thank Keiko Nakamura and Junko Teruyama for their comments on this draft and reflections on the current state of fieldwork in Japan. Ulan Bigozhin kindly provided notes of a recent talk for another perspective on the COVID-related struggles of native ethnographers. Michael Ryan and Elliott Bowen were invaluable cheerleaders. Many thanks are due to the organizations whose generosity made this research possible. The ITO Foundation for International Education Exchange funded my doctoral research between 2009–2011. The Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan funded my preliminary research in 2007 and follow-up studies in 2012–2013. Nazarbayev University funded follow-up research in 2015–2016, and 2018–2019. The latter two years were funded under award number 090118FD5331.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ This research was approved by the University of Michigan Health Sciences and Behavioral Sciences Institutional Review Board under submission number HUM00030869. Follow-up research was subsequently approved by the Nazarbayev University Institutional Research Ethics Committee. Oral consent was obtained for all interviewees prior to beginning research.

² Until 2023 I was at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Nazarbayev University, Astana, Kazakhstan. At the beginning of August, my university was placed on a list of nationally important enterprises which would have allowed me to return, PCR test results in hand. Prior to that, foreign nationals were not allowed entry.

³ I was eventually able to recoup a fraction of my funding, but was ultimately able to use very little of it since most of it had been earmarked for travel that became impossible as Japan kept its borders shut very firmly through 2021.

⁴ The capital of Kazakhstan was renamed to Nur-Sultan (‘Bright King,’ in Kazakh), in 2019, in honor of Kazakhstan’s first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev. However, it is still commonplace to refer to the capital by its 1998 name, Astana (meaning, much like Kyoto, simply ‘Capital’). The name of the city has become more fraught since the violent events of ‘Bloody January’ 2022 and the subsequent process of ‘de-Nazarbayevification’ ongoing amongst Kazanstan’s institutions, and avoiding the choice entirely by simply referring to ‘the Capital’ is now commonplace.

⁵ I alternate the word ‘plague’ with ‘pandemic’ intentionally, with the former word emphasizing the emotional experience of being surrounded by sickness and fear, and the second emphasizing the scale of the medical disaster.

⁶ This list is non-exclusive of the many other potential vectors of marginalization and discrimination that exist.

⁷ Matchmaker associations typically charge fees in this range when their member matchmakers enter new clients into the system; individual matchmakers often pass this on to their clients as a registration fee. In practice, the money funds the technological maintenance, server costs, and so on that an online database requires.

⁸ Many thanks to Makhabbat Boranbay for permission to use this story.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Nazarbayev University; ITO Foundation for International Education Exchange; and Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan.